The saga of the sewing machine.

So here's the deal. Shortly before I signed my contract with Digital Playground (18 months ago, -ish) I had just moved back to Southern California. Because this was a cross country move accomplished via two suitcases checked on the airplane and three boxes I had my dad ship, I did not bring my sewing machine. It wasn't really a great machine anyways, I didn't like the fact that it was ultra-electronic, it was bigger than necessary, etc. When I signed a contract with DP, I figured "hey, I'm gonna be here for a while, time to get a new machine". I went down to the fashion district. The fashion district in Los Angeles is amazing. It's way better than what's available in Philadelphia as far as fabrics, quality, selection, trimmings... and they have stores that sell sewing machines. I picked one that appeared to be Singer certified (brand loyalty, what can I say?) and explained to the proprietor what I needed. Apparently he had the perfect thing. I didn't know that there was an in-between category of machines.

Home sewers (your usual sewing machine people keep at home for hemming pants and making pillows) aren't really up to the abuse that happens when they're being used very frequently for big long projects. Industrial machines are huge, super fast and frankly a little scarey. Also, they don't do buttonholes and frequently the presser feet require a tool kit to change. This guy informed me that Singer makes a small line of machines that bridges that gap. Simple and heavy duty, a bit slower than an industrial, easy to use like a home sewer. It's called a commercial grade machine. It's perfect. I loved it for the past year and a half, until right before AVN I managed to kill it. Ok, so I didn't kill it, I just horribly jammed it. Getting it to a repair place *will* happen, just not right now. It makes sense to get a 2nd machine anyway, for backup and to give one a rest if it's been on for six hours or something. Except.... apparently they don't make the cg-550 anymore. What is this? Has Singer stopped making their commercial line of machines? Are they replacing this set of models with a new set? I don't know, and it's Saturday so I can't really call and try to get answers out of their customer service department.

Normally I would just get back to work on other things, except there really are no other things right now. I've already done my morning 20 minutes on the pole, actually went longer than 20 minutes, and have nothing else to do today. All caught up on the social network websites, want to sew and continue being productive in some way.
This whole mess of not being able to get machine to repair place, by the way, is precisely why I need to learn how to drive.

Now I'm off to Target to get a basic home sewer so I don't go insane sitting here wanting to scrub baseboards or something to keep busy.